Rep. Christopher Lee, a second-term Republican lawmaker representing western New York, abruptly resigned Wednesday after flirtatious e-mails, including a photo of him shirtless, were posted online by a gossip website. In a brief statement, Lee referred only obliquely to "this distraction," apologizing "deeply and sincerely" for harm he caused his family, staff and constituents. Just hours earlier, the Gawker website posted e-mails Lee exchanged with an unnamed, single 34-year-old woman in response to her personal ad on Craigslist.

Stephen says there's a new mail carrier in his neighborhood, and she's fond of chatting on her cellphone. In fact, she spends so much time yakking away, Stephen says, she sometimes delivers mail to the wrong house. She also frequently uses the F-word, much to the consternation of parents in the neighborhood. ASK LAZ: Smart answers to consumer questions Stephen is curious: What's the U.S. Postal Service's policy when it comes to cellphones? I know how he feels.

The Clinton presidential library on Friday released more than 75,000 e-mail messages that were sent by and to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, but they offered little new insight into her personality. The messages showed Kagan — currently the Obama administration's top lawyer to the high court and a former dean of Harvard Law School — to be more administrator than provocateur. Part of that was because of Kagan's role in the Clinton administration. As deputy director of President Clinton's domestic policy shop, she sat atop a pyramid of staffers who largely forwarded their proposals to her. Her job was to synthesize opinions to present to Clinton, not to sound off. There were, however, some flashes of personality.

Since becoming president of Chivas USA at the end of last month, Nelson Rodriguez has been busy trying to turn around an embattled Major League Soccer franchise. The league has affirmed that it wants the team to remain in Los Angeles, believing that there is enough room in the city for two MLS teams. For most of its history, Chivas USA has played second fiddle to the Galaxy in the Southern California market. At Sunday's season opener, which Chivas won 3-2 against the Chicago Fire, Rodriguez spoke with reporters at halftime about the team's situation and shared some glimpses into the future of the franchise.

August 12, 2009 | Veronique de Turenne, De Turenne is a Los Angeles writer and blogger.

Is anyone still unclear on the concept of the blog? Self-publishing on the Internet is the short answer, with millions of bloggers creating endless variations on the theme. There's the news blog, the politics blog, the travel blog, photo blogs, family blogs, humor blogs and, a natural for the form, the personal journal. That's what Katie Kampenfelt is writing when we meet her in the opening pages of Allison Burnett's canny third novel, "Undiscovered Gyrl." Katie's enough of a techie to have been enrolled in computer camp the summer before high school, but already so troubled by her parents' divorce that she wound up in a psych ward instead.

Two high-profile anti-terrorism task forces did not inform the Defense Department about contacts between a radical Islamic cleric and the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in last week's rampage at Ft. Hood, a senior Defense official said Tuesday. On the day of a memorial service for those killed at the Texas military base, the revelation compounded questions about whether the government had known enough in advance to stop the gunman. The FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Forces investigated e-mails that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sent over the last year to Anwar al Awlaki, an imam in Yemen who espouses a radical Islamist ideology and who has ties to militants.

After insisting that no one was receiving unsolicited e-mails from the White House, officials reversed themselves Monday night -- but blamed outside political groups for the messages. White House online director Macon Phillips said in a blog posting that independent groups, which he didn't name, had signed up their members to get updates about Obama's projects and priorities. "It has come to our attention that some people may have been subscribed to our e-mail lists without their knowledge -- likely as a result of efforts by outside groups of all political stripes -- and we regret any inconvenience caused by receiving an unexpected message," Phillips wrote.

It took just one word for Apple Inc. to make headlines. "Yep," wrote Apple chief Steve Jobs in an e-mail. The message was addressed to Andrea Nepori, an Italian blogger who wrote to sjobs@apple.com this week. He asked the reclusive Apple founder whether he'd be able to sync his free e-books to the iPad, due to hit U.S. stores next week. Jobs' affirmation wasn't the real news. That particular detail was listed on Apple's website before Nepori's inquiry. The response itself is what prompted bloggers to fly off the handle.

They arrive nearly every day, these sad, strange e-mails from Iraq. They are unsentimental and hard, gathered by stringers scattered across a country at war. They're often tough to follow, terse poems with broken rhythms and words landing in wrong places. But there's an unadorned power that speaks to things beyond style and grammar. "An IP source said that some gunmen assassinated yesterday evening staff brigadier general in the Iraqi army and his wife in Tobchi (west Baghdad)

The young Goldman, Sachs & Co. trader at the center of the government's civil fraud case against the firm was aware of problems with the complex financial products he was working on, e-mails released by the company indicate. In one of the messages, Fabrice Tourre, the only individual defendant in the case, called the controversial transaction that is the subject of the suit "a product of pure intellectual masturbation" and an "absolutely conceptual" invention without purpose.

February 6, 2014 | By Matt Pearce, This post has been updated, as indicated below.

There's junk mail, and then there's nasty mail: San Francisco writer Lisa McIntire says Bank of America sent her a credit card offer addressed to "Lisa Is A Slut McIntire," and she posted photos of it on Twitter on Thursday. BofA tweeted her an apology and pledged to investigate. [Updated, 5:45 p.m. Feb. 6: But the problem apparently originated with an academic society that was jointly marketing with the bank. ] McIntire, 32, told the Los Angeles Times in a phone interview that she first learned about the mail in a text exchange with her mother, which she posted on Twitter.

SACRAMENTO - Michael Picker, the newest member of the powerful Public Utilities Commission, has a long history with Gov. Jerry Brown: He worked in the governor's mail room during his first term from 1975 to 1977. "I delivered press releases," said Picker, 62, who moved to Sacramento from Echo Park a year after graduating from Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles in 1974. Since then, Picker, has held a number of government jobs, most recently as an elected board member of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and as senior adviser on renewable energy for Brown and his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Perhaps the U.S. Postal Service should commission a stamp honoring Shirley Familian. For 25 years she has been honoring mail carriers everywhere by turning canceled postage stamps into art. Friends from around the world clip the stamps from envelopes and send them to Familian, who patiently sorts them, stores them in zip-lock pages and then uses them to create fanciful designs that have a nearly hypnotic quality. She's now 93, and a three-month exhibition of her work has opened at the Los Angeles Craft & Folk Art Museum . Titled "Shirley Familian: 19,275 Stamps," the show features 14 hanging pieces and seven stamp-covered objects, including a skateboard, an iron and a teapot.

Yahoo said its email service recently fell victim to a coordinated cyberattack that resulted in the compromise of an undisclosed number of user accounts. The Sunnyvale, Calif., tech company announced the attack Thursday, saying it has taken immediate action to protect users who were affected by the breach by prompting them to reset their passwords. Yahoo did not say how many users were affected by the attack. Yahoo Mail is the second largest email provider -- behind Google's Gmail -- with 273 million accounts.

An off-and-on customer of OfficeMax, Mike Seay has gotten the office supply company's junk mail for years. But the mail that the grieving Lindenhurst, Ill., father said he got from OfficeMax last week was different. It was addressed to "Mike Seay, Daughter Killed in Car Crash. " Strange as that sounds, the mail reached the right guy. Seay's daughter Ashley, 17, was killed in a car crash with her boyfriend last year. OfficeMax somehow knew. And in a world where bits of personal data are mined from customers and silently sold off and shuffled among corporations, Seay appears to be the victim of some marketing gone horribly wrong.

Two men were arrested on suspicion of stealing hundreds of U.S. mail items including checks that were left at post office drop-off boxes in San Bernardino County, law enforcement authorities said Monday. The men were on probation and had outstanding warrants when they were arrested early Monday with unprocessed mail, opened mail, checks and burglary tools inside their vehicle, according to the Fontana Police Department. Police identified the driver as Angel Navarro, 24, and the passenger as Danny Camonte, 25, both of Adelanto. They were arrested after an officer spotted a "suspicious vehicle" by a field next to a U.S. post office in the 16000 block of Santa Ana Avenue in Fontana, police officials said in a statement.

A gaggle of transportation officials and community leaders gathered this week to help shape the future of public transit in Los Angeles County — to decide, in effect, whether it's time for revolutionary change, or whether the status quo should prevail. Status quo won by a knockout. The so-called Metro Blue Ribbon Committee was established by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority late last year to come up with "a new regional transit vision" for bus and rail systems.

A California Coastal Commission member already under investigation for a potential conflict of interest on a controversial project was put in an awkward position this week with the release of e-mails detailing a prominent lobbyist's attempts to secure his vote. E-mails between a hired lobbyist, developers and officials at the Port of San Diego reveal efforts to convince Commissioner Patrick Kruer to vote in favor of the multimillion-dollar project to revamp the downtown San Diego waterfront, a proposal ultimately defeated by the divided panel.

With Focus Features restructuring and shifting its identity toward the mainstream, "Dallas Buyers Club" represents the last Oscar hurrah for the division's James Schamus-led era that gave us great movies such as "The Pianist," "Brokeback Mountain," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Lost in Translation" and "Moonrise Kingdom. " And Focus is clearly going out swinging. The studio just mailed DVD screeners of "Dallas" to the 105,000-plus voting members of SAG-AFTRA, making sure its movie will be the first to arrive in Screen Actors Guild Awards voters' mailboxes.

Peggy Nugent wasn't sure what to make of an offer that arrived recently in the mail. "Congratulations!" it said in big letters. Nugent, of Manhattan Beach, had been selected to receive a three-day vacation in San Diego, including free hotel accommodations, two tickets to SeaWorld and a $100 restaurant coupon. The notice included what looked like a check - but wasn't - bearing the logo of SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. What caught Nugent's eye was the fine print on the back.